InterTradeIreland: the cross-border funding most Northern Ireland businesses have never used

What InterTradeIreland actually is

InterTradeIreland is one of six North/South Implementation Bodies created under Strand 2 of the 1998 Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement, headquartered on Kilmorey Street in Newry. It is jointly funded by the Department for the Economy in Northern Ireland and the Department of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment in the Republic of Ireland — which is the detail that explains everything else about it. Unlike Invest NI or Go Succeed, which spend Northern Ireland money on Northern Ireland businesses, InterTradeIreland exists specifically to fund and facilitate trade that crosses the border, and its programmes are built around that single test.

That has a practical consequence worth stating plainly: if your growth plan is entirely inside Northern Ireland, InterTradeIreland is the wrong door, and our Invest NI and Go Succeed guide covers the funding that fits instead. If part of your plan involves selling into, tendering in, or raising investment interest from the Republic, InterTradeIreland has three programmes worth knowing about, and they are rarely mentioned in the same conversation as Invest NI even though a business can use both.

Acumen: funding a sales resource to grow into the Republic

Acumen funds part of the cost of putting a dedicated salesperson on growing your cross-border sales, rather than expecting an existing team to fit it in around the day job. For a full-time resource employed directly by the business, Acumen provides up to £17,250 (€21,562) of support over 12 months. For a part-time or contracted resource — a sales agent, consultant or lead-generation arrangement — support runs to £9,200 (€11,500) over 6 to 12 months. Before you recruit, the programme also funds 100% of a market research exercise into the cross-border opportunity: market size, pricing, routes to market and competitor analysis, so the recruitment brief is built on evidence rather than a guess. Once a hire is approved, InterTradeIreland also helps with recruitment materials, shortlisting and a structured 12-month sales plan for the new starter.

Eligibility is specific. You need to be an SME — under 250 staff, turnover below £40m or the euro equivalent — registered in Northern Ireland or the Republic, trading for 18 to 24 months with a proven track record in your home market, and currently taking less than 40% of your sales from the cross-border market you are targeting. Wholesale, retail, distribution, tourism, hospitality, primary agriculture, personal services and professional business services are excluded, which rules Acumen itself out for firms like ours, even though the wider trade advice still applies to any business.

Go-2-Tender: a route onto public contracts on both sides of the border

Public procurement on the island of Ireland runs to billions a year, and most eligible SMEs never bid because the paperwork, not the price, is what knocks them out first. Go-2-Tender is built around that specific failure. It starts with a sector-specific workshop covering how public sector scoring actually works — pre-qualification questionnaires, method statements, the evidence buyers expect to see — and, once that workshop is complete, moves to one-to-one mentoring from an approved tendering specialist while the business prepares a live bid.

Eligibility: under 250 staff, last full-year turnover between £50,000 and £40m (or the euro equivalent), at least 12 months trading, and operating predominantly in manufacturing or tradable services. Sole traders, partnerships and social enterprises that meet the criteria can apply, and a business inside a group structure is assessed on the parent company's figures. There is no professional-services exclusion on Go-2-Tender the way there is on Acumen, so a firm shut out of one may still fit the other, depending on what it is actually trying to do.

Seedcorn: the all-island investor readiness competition

Seedcorn is the largest investor readiness competition on the island of Ireland, run annually with an equity-free cash prize fund. The 2026 competition carries a total prize fund of €800,000 across three categories — business-to-business, business-to-consumer and deep tech — split into an overall winner's prize of €130,000, category prizes of €100,000, nine regional prizes of €50,000 and a €20,000 impact award. It opened for entries on 5 March 2026 and concludes with an awards ceremony on 5 November 2026; the competition re-opens on a similar annual cycle, so a business not ready this year has a genuine reason to prepare for the next one rather than treating the deadline as missed for good.

To enter, a venture needs to be incorporated on the island of Ireland, in the seed, start-up or early growth stage, and not have raised more than €1 million (or the sterling equivalent) in external equity. Founders need to have played the central role in building the business, still hold key management positions, and retain significant personal equity — a venture bought rather than founded does not qualify. Winning is not the only value in entering: the process itself forces a business plan, financial projections and a pitch to be built to investor standard, which is useful discipline whether or not the business goes on to raise money.

Worked example: an Antrim manufacturer building an export sales role

Illustrative figures, against a real Acumen structure. Take a joinery and fit-out manufacturer based near Antrim, turnover £1.1m, of which roughly 12% currently comes from customers in the Republic — comfortably under Acumen's 40% ceiling, and trading for six years, well clear of the 18-24 month minimum.

• The business first uses Acumen's fully-funded market research to test demand for fitted joinery among developers and fit-out contractors in Dublin and the wider east coast, rather than guessing at the opportunity.
• It recruits a full-time export sales manager on a salary of £34,000, which comes to roughly £39,500 once employer's National Insurance and pension contributions are added.
• Acumen funds up to £17,250 of that first year's cost — a little under half of the all-in figure — while the new hire builds a pipeline and relationships across the border.
• Twelve months in, if cross-border sales have grown from 12% to, say, 20% of turnover on a stable or growing total, the business is still comfortably inside the 40% ceiling and could return to Acumen for a second phase, or move toward Go-2-Tender if public sector fit-out contracts are now in scope.

The number that actually matters for planning is the net cost: £39,500 minus £17,250 leaves £22,250 the business funds itself in year one, against a role expected to be generating its own revenue well before the funded period ends.

Where sole reliance on a GB or ROI adviser goes wrong

A GB-based accountant or business adviser typically has no reason to know InterTradeIreland exists — it does not operate in England, Scotland or Wales, so it never comes up in their usual client conversations. An adviser based solely in the Republic, meanwhile, often signposts Enterprise Ireland and Local Enterprise Offices without the Northern Ireland half of the picture: the Department for the Economy funding stream, the NI-specific eligibility wording, and how an InterTradeIreland application sits alongside Invest NI or Go Succeed rather than replacing them. A Northern Ireland-based adviser who works across the border routinely is the one placed to say which of the three programmes above, if any, actually fits — and to say plainly when none of them do.

Your checklist for this week

• Work out what share of current turnover already comes from the Republic. Under 40%, with 18-24 months of trading behind you, Acumen is worth a call.
• Check your sector against Acumen's exclusion list before you apply — wholesale, retail, distribution, tourism, hospitality, primary agriculture, personal services and professional business services are out, whatever else about your business fits.
• If public sector contracts are realistic for your trade, look at the next Go-2-Tender workshop date rather than bidding without it.
• If you are pre-revenue or early-stage and have raised under €1m in equity, put 5 November in the diary as the point this year's Seedcorn closes, and start the business plan regardless of whether you enter this cycle or the next.
• Get your management accounts and sales-by-market split in order before you apply to anything — every one of these programmes asks for evidence before it asks for ambition.

We prepare the financial evidence behind applications like these as part of ordinary management accounts and business planning work, and the wider funding picture in our Invest NI and Go Succeed guide is worth reading alongside this one if you have not already. Anyone trading goods across the border should also read our cross-border VAT guide, since InterTradeIreland funding and Windsor Framework VAT treatment are two separate questions that tend to arrive on the same desk at the same time.